Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
This tantrum is just a badly-thought out PR ploy.
Much noise, little impact.
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Felix, I usually find your posts insightful and thoughtful but not this one. There are a lot of flaws in Amazon's thinking but most importantly, Amazon's thinking rests on a yet-to-be-proved assumption: to-wit, that the ebook market sales will exceed that of pbooks within the next few years. It also assumes that every Kindle buyer is a book buyer of books that are not on the New York Times bestseller list. Even here on MR, many Kindlers buy "free" ebooks only, and it doesn't matter how many of them you sell, they still make zero dollars.
Finally, Amazon's plans rest on shareholder willingness to go along with them. Shareholders are beginning to agitate for profits and are starting to show less patience with Bezos' long-term strategy.
We are only in the birth years of the ebook market. No one knows how it will play out and pbooks and b&m stores, even though their market share and profitability are declining, are still the dominant part of the market. If the competition makes a few wise moves, they may still do significant damage to Amazon's plans.
And to dismiss pbook buyers as luddites simply demonstrates a personal prejudice. Not every book read is a novel and not every book read is "readable" on an ebook device. pBooks still have a role to play. Your prejudice is like assuming that every person who watches a sporting event is overweight with a beer belly, drinks cheap beer, has an IQ of 2, a nonexistent personality, and is best classified as a couch potato or neanderthal throwback. That might be your personal belief, but that doesn't make it fact.